Well sell automotive parts and accessories. Just today I am getting a bunch of ASINs for stuff we sell for Lexus removed for “restricted products.” It gives me no information whatsoever…and none of these products are against Amazon policy, etc. (they are cosmetic parts…not like exhausts or any of that stuff).
Any advice here? Another bot gone wild? We sell the same product for a lot of vehicle makes and models…yet they are only pulling the Lexus ones.
The email says…
We have temporarily deactivated some of your detail pages because they are potentially violating Amazon’s Restricted Products policy. The listings that were deactivated are currently under review and can be found below.
Why is this happening?
Customers trust that they can always buy with confidence on Amazon. The sale of illegal, unsafe, or other restricted products is strictly prohibited. Although Amazon is undertaking this review, you are responsible for ensuring that the products you offer comply with all applicable laws, regulations, and Amazon’s policies.
What actions do I need to take?
The review period generally takes 2-4 business days, but may take longer depending on the type of product that is being reviewed. There is no action needed from you at this time. If we confirm that your listings do not violate Amazon’s Restricted Products policy, they will be automatically reinstated. Otherwise, they will remain deactivated and we will provide you with additional information about the removal.
Learn more about our policies in Seller Central Help:
If you believe that the products listed are permitted for sale on Amazon, contact Selling Partner Support: Amazon Sign-In and include evidence or documentation that supports your claim. We will investigate your concern and the additional information provided.
Ok sounds good. Yeah, I’m hoping it’s just another bot gone wild incorrectly here…..as none of these have anything in the item or product page or anywhere that would be a restricted product.
The only thing I noticed was that when I went to the inactive reason (which, again it gives no more specifics besides restricted product), it says these were under motorcycle accessories (that wasn’t the reason they are saying it’s restricted….it just is saying that’s the category its in).
I didn’t list those there and I actually don’t believe they were even in the motorcycle accessories category despite what Amazon says in that one little area. It still shows 0 under my restricted products policy violations in our performance dashboard but that dashboard has been really wonky the last few days). Regardless, even if AI accidentally put these in the motorcycle category, it’s not a reason they would be removed for restricted products.
Amazon has gotten a little better in this regard. A few years ago, this BS would have been a suspension. Someone got a brain over at Amazon and noticed that probably 97% of listing / seller violations got resolved.
In the meantime the thing that matters the most to Amazon ($$$$) was being lost because sellers / listings were down for no reason.
There are 3 levels now:
A review where the item is allowed to stay active while the review happens.
What’s going on with your listings
Seller Suspension
The default used to be option 3.
I’m sure your issue will be worked out shortly. Good Luck
I don’t have any advice other than to wait, but I’ll mention that there has been a flurry of posts recently on the NSFE about products being moved to wrong categories, some of which have caused additional problems. So you’re not alone. Hopefully things will work out in a few days (keeping in mind that “2-3 days” is often Amazon-speak for “A week or two”)
So I did end up closing (not deleting) the rest of my listings for Lexus. It did stop anything more from being flagged. I did notice that 6 of the 48 listings that were flagged are no longer showing up as inactive detail pages…so I am hopeful the other 42 will reinstate today, too.
Still no message from Amazon as to what the issue is specifically…
WTF…now we are getting more of these for Lexus items and they are actually give us reasons why they are removing them. They are saying they are AIRBAGS! We literally sell decorative trim pieces to put on cars!
Nothing in our listing would even hint that has any relation to an airbag. What do we do here? I am so damn tired of these hoops to jump through for this site.
It is likely that an Amabot is selecting the listings for review and a human is reviewing them.
This process is an improvement, and as the bots find more, the human will be able to act with more intelligence. AI is not the only entity that can be trained.
Seeing any words anywhere in the listings that may be triggering a bot, in relation to Airbags or anything associated with Airbags? Clearly Amazon has deployed another flawed bot.
Do you have the opportunity to appeal? It’s going to be a PITA to appeal them 1 by 1 but it’s the same issue so you can use the same verbiage and evidence for each.
Been there and done this with all of our listings but we always got them back and I suspect you will too if you try.
Absolutely none (language or words that references airbags or steering wheels or anything even remotely related). Our listings have no more relation to airbags than they do to chocolate chip cookies.
I am going to appeal one by one….there are 12 currently. I totally deleted the other 36 from yesterday they didn’t yet reflag today (there were 48 total yesterday but since we don’t ever get sales on any of those other 36, I deleted them just so I’m not dealing with 48 different appeals).
Mind you…these 12 ASINS today are all part of the the exact same ones that they said were being reviewed yesterday and the email yesterday specifically said “if they are found to not be prohibited products they will automatically reinstated”. All 48 were reinstated.
Again, none of these showed on our seller performance dashboard yesterday thus there was no way to appeal them. However, the emails yesterday clearly stated these were nothing to appeal at the current time and I thought the matter was closed once they were reinstated (and they were reinstated into closed status since we had closed all of them).
I’m just confused on why these were re-flagged in a more serious manner tonight not to mention it’s only ones for Lexus cars they have flagged.
Just got emails from all of our appeals saying they have starting the reinstatement process for all.
Great for that…but how much you want to bet we have this same issue tomorrow if I relist all of these? This is just par for the course…I have to spend 4x as much time on Amazon than any other site because of all the obstacles and roadblocks they put in place to conduct business or deal with failed bots, etc.
I’ve been through this before. My appeal is … well let’s just say it’s not real nice. It will go something like … “If anyone would bother to look at the product they will see it’s a _________ and NOT a __________! Please fix this right away.”
No, because then you can’t make the changes needed to remove the hit from your account health. Removing the listing doesn’t help and can make the situation worse.
Big shocker….they are doing this again today…..not showing on performance dashboard but I bet they automatically reinstate these tonight and then I get another email in 1-2 days making me appeal all these same ones again and then having them show on the dashboard.